Arrangements that ring of obscurity (they can be read as choppy, but I think it’s more so hazy) usher in moments of surprising beauty, around certain corners truly moving sounds. Here she’s a complete ghostly presence lilting in her own small world, which lightly melds with reality. Initially the album threatened to be overly sheer and the songs were hard to pin down, but over time its quirks seemed like simple, effective, natural conclusions. For instance there’s “Symphonia IX,” a vocal lost in time accompanied by floating dark matter; at first it seemed a bit nondescript but it easily grew on me, enveloping and eventually undeniable. 

Pretty obscurity and nocturnal disco noise are perfect for her lyrics here, stream-of-consciousness that tries to capture some purity of little-spoken feeling. There’s a part in “vowels = space and time,” which sounds like the percolation of an ‘80s dance-pop hit, where she tries speaking for this person, little described except for Grimes’ stake in him: “I could be a better man.” Such moments of ambivalent clarity are touchstones as the album builds in weight and texture (the last batch of tracks starting with “Nightmusic” are hefty bliss and represent some of Grimes’ most potent songwriting).